The vast majority of people have zero tolerance for racism. Being branded a racist is nearly as damaging as getting on the sex crimes registry. People go to great lengths to label themselves “not racist” even while spouting racist views. It’s just not something anyone wants to be, aside from a tiny minority who wear the badge proudly. Be an out and out racist, and you’ll have trouble getting decent work, and you’ll lose some friends and family. It’s so toxic that many people won’t even want to be associated with you.
So what would happen if this type of societal ostracism was used against other social ills? First, let’s look at something directly related to racism, sexism. While there are some aspects of sexism that are nearly as toxic as racism, such as directly stating that females are inferior, other types of awful behavior that clearly express a belief in female inferiority are not punished all that severely by society. Womanizers, abusers, sexual harassers, common criminals who especially target females because they are physically weaker, and men who think that women exist primarily as objects for their pleasure. Recently there’s been a lot of activism against the rape culture, but it just seems like a man who does these things can still usually exist in polite society in a way that a racist cannot. Is this likely to change? Momentum seems to be heading in that direction. Is it a good thing? Probably even more important than solving racism IMO. Having racist beliefs only directly hurts minorities if you are in a position to hurt them. Having sexist beliefs not only can be used to hurt women, it almost always IS used to hurt women, and it seems like every guy who is like that has left a trail of physically or emotionally damaged women in their wake. So should we ostracize these types? Or are they just so common that we’re reluctant to go that far? There are certainly a lot more men who are disrespectful to the women in their lives than out racists.
Or let’s take other social ills, like drug abuse, unsafe sex, lack of work ethic, violent tempers, grossly reckless driving habits? If these behaviors were considered beyond the pale by society the way racism is, would that change a lot of people’s behavior and sharply reduce the prevalence of such social ills?
Now obviously one of the effects of anti-racism is that it simply pushes a lot of it underground. Whereas our alcoholics, womanizers, and ne’er do well friends are all around us at least partially out in the open, racists normally tend to hide in the shadows. But it also does seem that there’s a lot less of it. People really, really not wanting to be considered racist does tend to affect all but the most indecent people. If it was similarly awful to be an alcoholic, would more people abstain to avoid the risk of becoming alcoholic? Okay, that’s an addiction so not totally analogous, although less severe social ostracization of smokers does seem to be reducing their numbers. But to go back to sexism, would it make men less likely to brag about the women they’ve wronged if all men who wanted to seem decent people ostracized them for it? On that issue it does seem like it would do a lot of good, while doing less, but still substantial good, for unrelated social ills.
Of course, the downside is that we’d go back to a 1950s-like society updated for the 21st century, just with a different set of taboos. But I think we are probably already heading in that direction. There doesn’t seem to be a general liberal philosophy of challenging social norms anymore and letting people find their own answers to difficult moral questions. seems like we’re snapping back to moral absolutism and a new kind of social conservatism.